Exceptional Jedi: Fire and Ice
by WindySilver
Summary: 516 BBY; starts immediately after Prelude to Another Time and continues onwards to sometime before Grand Master's final moment. Findio leaves the Jedi Order, leaving Daa-Rei, his love, behind to suffer from heartbreak. FFM 2015 July 24th.


**/Author's note: This is the lyric-less version of the songfic art/SW-ExceptionalJedi-Songfic-Fire-and-Ice-548591345 /**

Findio left. The powerful bond between them withered, even though only he and Daa-Rei knew and felt it. The elder Jedi who had once, many years ago, trained that coward and loved him ever since those times could not help sobbing. They had promised to stay together until either of them became one with the Force but now... Now Findio, with his so-called oh-so-mighty-and-high duties he could have fulfilled by helping to stop the war which had killed their home planet still inebriating his head, had broken that promise and left him.

 _WAS EVERYTHING FOR NOTHING?!_ was what Daa-Rei wanted to scream at the younger Veledosian, but as the Grand Master of the Jedi Order he had to do whatever he could to keep his composure – or whatever was left of it anymore.

It was over now. Nothing they had told each other, nothing they had promised each other had any value or importance. The Council left to wherever each of the Councilors went in the Jedi temple. Daa-Rei shut himself to his quarters. He still could not believe that his love was gone just like that. _Why couldn't Findio stay with me? Why couldn't that idiot just honor his promises for this once and stay?!_

Daa-Rei took the necklace Findio had given him when he had become the Grand Master. It was, in emotional way, his most precious thing. But now...

Now that necklace meant nothing for him. He snapped the string and threw the necklace to the floor with as much force as he just could; the pendant beautifully ornamented by Findio himself cracked into a few pieces. He proceeded to break, if not even destroy the rest of the reminders of Findio.

He wanted to forget ever meeting that man.

When the rage of the Grand Master quieted, he looked at the broken pendant and realized what he had done. With tears flowing unstoppably from his eyes, he kneeled and picked the pendant's pieces up, looking at the ornaments Findio had carefully chosen and carved with his own skills. Those carvings told certain things about what was between the person who made it and whom they made it for.

Those carvings told that Findio loved Daa-Rei much deeper than anyone else. Daa-Rei could not help but ask through the disappearing bond: _Why did you leave me? Doesn't our love matter to you anymore at all? Answer me, my love!  
_  
The bond was cold and numb. Findio never answered him. The agony was excruciating, so excruciating that Daa-Rei wanted to die. But he could only cry and let his heart howl to the Force, wishing that Findio would react to his agony someday. Yet still he somehow knew that Findio would never do so. Not anymore.

 _Nevermore would he hear the voice of the man he loved so much...  
_  
During the next decade Daa-Rei could not recall doing anything else than sitting in the Council chamber, giving his blessings to the VeledosJedi, who left the Order due to what had happened to Veledos, and giving eulogies in the funerals of deceased VeledosJedi.

After that, when the amount of VeledosJedi had fallen very small, he started recalling some other actions he committed. Those memories which managed to stay were tiny, trivial.

 _They were all meaningless..._

Some people who still somehow had some connections to the exiled tribes told that Findio was not among the exiles. The former VeledosJedi had gone hiding, having abandoned everything, even his own kind.

Daa-Rei wanted to deny it, but he knew it better than anyone else: Findio had ran away from his responsibilities once and for all and would never return. They would never see each other again.

Daa-Rei did not go to missions anymore, or if he did, he did not remember them at all. Whenever he wasn't occupied with something, he found himself wandering through the halls. Even though the Jedi Temple had been his home for as long as he could remember, ever since _The Poisoning of Veledos_ he had felt homeless. Every VeledosJedi had felt that way, for Veledos was where they were from and where they belonged. For they belonged to the domain of the seven Ancients.

That was how it used to be. That was how it was supposed to be, so the Ancients had wanted it to be back when they had created the element-users' first generation...

But now that domain was gone and the folk was stranded in worlds unknown.

The Veledosians were gone and those who stayed in public had broken hearts. No healer could heal their traumas, no painkiller could kill their pain. They were to die in silent agony. Daa-Rei tried to persist without Findio, but the feeling of being betrayed by him never subsided. It never could, for Findio never came to correct anything, to apologize anything, even be there by his side or, if not even that, in front of his eyes.

As he grew more and more bitter during the course of years, he started to refuse to admit or even accept that a small, mostly dead part of him missed Findio and wanted him back, or at least see him for once more, only once more before joining the Force.

But the greatest betrayal of all in Daa-Rei's life never came to redeem himself.

 **/Star Wars (c) Lucasfilm, any characters you cannot find on Wookieepedia, Veledos, Veledosians and their language (c) Me/**


End file.
